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Talking to Skeptics TALKING TO SKEPTICS by Charles Goldhaber B.A. in Philosophy and Japanese Language & Culture, summa cum laude University of California, Berkeley, 2011 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2020 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Charles Goldhaber It was defended on October 29, 2020 and approved by John McDowell, PhD, Distinguished University Professor, Philosophy Stephen Engstrom, PhD, Professor, Philosophy James Shaw, PhD, Associate Professor, Philosophy Karl Schafer, PhD, Professor, Philosophy Dissertation Director: John McDowell, PhD, Distinguished University Professor, Philosophy ii Copyright c by Charles Goldhaber 2020 iii TALKING TO SKEPTICS Charles Goldhaber, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2020 Skeptics argue that we can know very little, threatening our claims to knowledge. Many philosophers now think there is no use in talking to skeptics|that nothing can change their minds, curing them of skepticism. These philosophers opt for mere prevention, aiming to convince only non-skeptics that skeptical arguments fail. I argue that a cure is needed, viable, and theoretically illuminating. First, I argue that the mere prevention of skepticism is likely to fail. To succeed, it would need to show why skeptical arguments appear compelling. Showing this either reveals that the arguments are compelling, demonstrating the need for cure, or reveals how they merely appear so, constituting a cure. Second, I show that we can change a skeptic's mind. I argue that influential arguments for skepticism about the external world all rely on a shared, tacit premise: that perception never guarantees that things are as we seem to perceive them to be. I then argue that arguments for this premise are question-begging. Showing the skeptic that her skepticism lacks foundation clears obstacles to her accepting, on ordinary grounds, a view on which perception can provide us with knowledge of how things are around us, thus curing her. Third, I argue that my cure helps us understand the nature, significance, and history of skepticism. For Hume, I explain, skepticism is a temperament, which leads to mad- ness when overly dominant, but only carefulness when balanced with other temperaments. Tracing skepticism to a groundless intuition helps motivate Hume's focus on temperaments, while Hume's conception of proper temperamental balance helps to diagnose and moderate skepticism. I then argue that Kant tries to cure a skeptical empiricist not by showing skepticism's incoherence, but by offering an alternative explanation of our knowledge. Kant's portrayal of skepticism as arising from despair of understanding human knowledge explains why the skeptic is apt to find his alternative appealing, and teaches a general lesson about curing iv skepticism: Offering the skeptic a way to make sense of our knowledge allows him to overcome the frustration from which his skepticism arises. Keywords: skepticism, knowledge, perception, temperament, Hume, Kant. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ......................................... ix 1.0 CURE AND PREVENTION ..........................1 1.1 WHO SKEPTICS ARE.............................1 1.2 KINDS OF RESPONSES TO SKEPTICISM.................3 1.3 THE PREFERENCE FOR PREVENTION..................8 1.4 IGNORING THE SKEPTIC.......................... 11 1.5 A DILEMMA FOR MERE PREVENTION.................. 16 1.6 TRANSITION: HOPE FOR A CURE..................... 21 2.0 THE GROUNDLESSNESS OF SKEPTICISM ............... 24 2.1 PLAN FOR A CURE.............................. 24 2.2 A COMMON PREMISE IN SKEPTICAL ARGUMENTS.......... 25 2.3 JUST AN INTUITION............................. 36 2.4 REACHING THE SKEPTIC.......................... 40 2.5 OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES......................... 43 2.6 CONCLUSION.................................. 46 2.7 TRANSITION: HISTORICAL PRECEDENT................. 52 3.0 THE HUMORS IN HUME'S SKEPTICISM ................ 56 3.1 AN OVERLOOKED QUESTION........................ 56 3.2 A CYCLE THROUGH THE HUMORS.................... 60 3.3 THE ANACHRONISM OBJECTION..................... 69 3.4 THE METHODOLOGY OBJECTION..................... 75 3.5 RECONCEIVING HUME'S SKEPTICISM.................. 80 3.6 CONCLUSION.................................. 88 3.7 TRANSITION: JUST A PALLIATIVE?.................... 91 4.0 KANT'S OFFER TO THE SKEPTICAL EMPIRICIST ......... 96 4.1 A NEW QUESTION............................... 96 vi 4.2 TRADITIONAL READINGS OF KANT ON HUME............. 101 4.3 KANT'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS SKEPTICAL EMPIRICISTS....... 111 4.4 THE EXPLANATORY READING OF THE DEDUCTION......... 116 4.5 THE EXPLANATION IN THE DEDUCTION................ 122 4.6 THE INSTABILITY OF SKEPTICAL EMPIRICISM............ 131 4.7 FURTHER OBSTACLES............................ 144 4.8 CONCLUSION.................................. 148 5.0 CONCLUSION TO THE DISSERTATION ................. 151 APPENDIX A. CHAPTER SUMMARIES .................... 158 APPENDIX B. NOTE ON CITATIONS OF HUME AND KANT ..... 160 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................... 163 vii LIST OF FIGURES 1 The four humors................................... 62 2 Abbreviations for Hume and Kant's writings.................... 162 viii PREFACE This dissertation is a set of interconnected essays on the theme of skepticism. Common to each essay is the idea that we will understand the nature and proper treatment of skepticism better than many contemporary discussions do, if we consider the history, ambitions, moods, and feelings which give rise to skepticism. Throughout each essay, I will be treating skepticism as a kind of infirmity or illness. As an illness, its treatment is aided by looking beyond its symptoms and for its underlying causes. In viewing skepticism in this way, I do not mean to disparage or trivialize the phenomenon, those afflicted with it, or the thinking that it can inspire. On the contrary, I think we must take skepticism seriously. We must treat it with a sober respect in part because, like some diseases, it is a regular and natural part of human life, and can be brought about through human activities that are often or in other circumstances salutary. Viewing the illness in light of these origins can be one way of coming to see skepticism as capable of playing a positive role in human life, especially insofar as it can help usher in a kind of intellectual maturity. Nonetheless, skepticism's harmful side should not be overlooked, and the production of a cure for such an illness is a worthy humanitarian effort. One of the principal goals of this dissertation is to offer a cure for skepticism. I develop this cure in Chapter2. But another goal is to diagnose what I see as a deficiency in recent philosophical discussions of skepticism, which I believe tend to distort the nature of the phenomenon by abstracting it from human life. Most philosophical discussions of skepti- cism nowadays treat it as one of many possible, equally well-positioned views about human knowledge or justification. In particular, they take skepticism to be the view that we know nothing, or very little, of what we ordinarily take ourselves to know, or that we are justified in believing little to none of the things we believe. Like any other view in epistemology|say, fallibilism or contextualism|arguments are produced in its favor, and considered on their own merits, presumably from a hallowed position of philosophical neutrality. This sort of approach to skepticism may appear appropriate, insofar as philosophy itself can seem to require sober non-partisanship. Surely part of what makes philosophy attractive ix and worthwhile is that it can, in some circumstances, not only help us to understand the grounds of what we antecedently believe, but also change our minds and make us wiser as a result. To succeed with this, philosophy may indeed require us to suspend judgment about the topic of interest and patiently turn it on all sides before deciding what to think. But thinking that philosophy must always do this, or even that there can ever be a perfectly pure decision from the void, is, I think, a mistake. This way of thinking removes philosophy from its actual, humble origins in human concern and insight, and, in doing so, impoverishes the resources of philosophical dialectic. It can lead us to overlook the possibility of appealing to more than our interlocutor's explicit commitments. We might then miss the relevance of her antecedent aspirations, affective tendencies, and ability to dissociate from her current views sufficiently to entertain others and see where they lead. It may seem that it is skepticism in particular, rather than philosophy in general, which demands that we limit the resources used in debate with a skeptic to a very narrow set, insofar as skepticism casts doubt on so much of what we ordinarily take ourselves to know. But to think that this is so, I suggest, is to forget that skepticism is a condition that people can be afflicted by, and that philosophy can and ought to play a role in the treatment and moderation of such natural infirmities. In order to reclaim a more resource-rich dialectic, I propose to model philosophical treat- ment of skepticism on a conversation with a skeptic. In calling my dissertation \Talking to Skeptics," I do not mean that I will be using a dialogical form. Instead, I call it that to remind the reader that skepticism is something a person has, and
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